Peeping teen in shower: I was checking if phone was waterproof

There are many ways of testing a phone's waterproof qualities that aren't illegal.
Tested/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Humans' own explanations for their behavior are always more gripping than anything big data can concoct.

Please consider, then, the internal machinations of an 18-year-old from the UK who took pains to describe himself as anything but a peeping teen.

In June, Zak Hardy was caught poking his cell phone over a partition in a swimming pool cubicle. He was filming a girl in a shower. However, as the Plymouth Herald reported, the teen insisted he was actually testing whether his phone was truly waterproof.

There is no evidence that his phone was a Sony Xperia, known for its waterproofed tendencies.

However, his claim to be an ardent phone tester was made before he got himself a lawyer. Once that feat had been achieved, Hardy admitted he was really foolhardy.

You see, it's hard to claim that you're testing a phone for its water-resistant tendencies when you're holding it above your head and pointing it into the next cubicle.

It's even harder when the girl notices the light from your phone, covers up and reports you.

Hardy was found guilty of voyeurism. This despite his initial claim that he may have set the camera on his phone off when he was drying it.

The court was not amused by his patently twisted retelling.

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It ordered his phone to be destroyed. Hardy was also given a five-year sexual offenses banning order and an 18-month community order. He will be on the sex offenders register for five years. He was also ordered to pay 150 pounds (around $242).

His lawyer hardly garlanded himself in decorum either.

The Plymouth Herald quoted him as saying of Hardy: "He accepts what he did. It is not the most serious offense, although it was of course upsetting for the complainant."